


Between You and I

by wordcraze



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-06
Updated: 2013-08-06
Packaged: 2017-12-22 15:48:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/915058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordcraze/pseuds/wordcraze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes love isn't enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between You and I

Zayn never knows what he wants. He thinks he does, but a day later, he finds himself questioning decisions he’s made. He leaves Bradford, and moves to New York, but it’s too much for him. At first, he thinks the fast-paced lifestyle is what he needs, but a week later, he yearns for Los Angeles.

Los Angeles, and all its traffic, the warm filthy streets of Hollywood, the smell of exhaust in the air, the orange sunrise, the pink sunset. He likes all the colorful personalities he passes on the sidewalk. The groups of glam rockers, fashionistas, hippies, and beautiful drag queens. Los Angeles, or Wonderland, he likes to call it. Maybe one day he’ll try to climb out of this rabbit hole, and try to find the light of a new city, but it has a tight grip on him. It’s the city that won’t let go.

He gets a small apartment, and he decorates it as if it will be a permanent home for him. He scrubs the floors clean, and he paints on the walls. He draws a jacaranda tree on the wall of his room because he finds the blossoms beautiful, and if there has to be one beautiful thing in his life, then it might as well be in his bedroom. Antiques litter his apartment, and he likes to think it emulates the plush setting of an old film. Beautiful old lamps with tassels, chairs made of polished mahogany, and a deep purple curtain separating the living room from the kitchen.

There is a pretty pixie-like girl who lives down the hall from him, and she strikes up such enthusiastic conversation, he’s unsure if she’s just friendly, or trying to come on to him. The funny thing is that she’s thinking the exact same thing, and she clears it up with a laugh that sounds like bells.

"Don’t worry, sweetie," she says. “I’m not interested in what you’ve got down there." And Zayn gets it when her eyes wander to a woman who is hurrying down the hall to catch the elevator before it closes.

The pixie girl’s name is Perrie, and she knows all the hot spots. She takes Zayn with her, and they go get coffee at little hole in the walls, and vegan takeout from some hidden gem of a restaurant.

The one thing that Zayn notices, is that everyone is beautiful. The waiters, baristas, and bartenders are all androgynous boys and girls with dreams of a bigger life. Wannabe starlets wearing crimson lipstick serving breakfast at the diner, and aspiring directors mixing coffee behind counters. And when night falls, they shed their uniforms for glamor, and it’s a toxic scene. They’re stumbling on the streets, their veins charged with liquor and powder.

They come to Los Angeles to live, but they also come here to die.

Perrie takes Zayn to a club called Avalon, and he can feel the music pound in his chest the second he walks in. While Perrie chats up a girl at the bar, Zayn surveys his surroundings, taking in the sweaty bodies on the dance floor, swaying and jumping in unison to the music.

"Gonna go for a smoke," he tells Perrie, and she waves him away without looking. He steps outside, and joins the other smokers, but he fumbles with his cigarette when he sees the most unexpected thing.

Zayn isn’t surprised seeing beautiful people at every corner, so it’s not just simple aesthetics.

But he sees a boy.

He’s tall with brown hair that curls a bit at the ends, a wide infectious smile that results in the deepest dimples Zayn had ever seen, and eyes like green stained glass. Something radiates off of him, and it’s unlike anything Zayn has encountered. It’s magnetic, it’s terrible and beautiful at the same time, and he grows dizzy with it. Suddenly, Zayn needs this boy. He swears that he’ll need him tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. He won’t change his mind about him, and he won’t toss him away like another passing fancy. His old habits will die, and this boy will give him new life.

I need this, he sends a silent plea out to the universe. I’ll never ask for anything again, I need him, I need him, I need him.

The boy stops in mid-laugh, and his glass eyes flicker over to Zayn’s. His smile softens, and he licks his bottom lip in a habitual way, clearly unaware of its effect. It makes Zayn die inside.

They slowly make their way towards each other, like everything around them is slow motion, and a soft rock soundtrack is playing in the background. The boy’s eyes are greener up close, and there’s something wild about them, and Zayn gets the crazy notion that he’ll be able to tame this stranger. He’s thinking so far ahead, it frightens him, but he’s never wanted anything so badly.

"I don’t see people like you every day," the boy says it like its a fact, and not a pick up line. “I’m Harry."

"I’m Zayn."

Harry’s eyes light up, and he repeats it softly, like it’s sacred. "Zayn."

They walk back in together, and Zayn sees Perrie pressing a girl up against the wall, kissing her, their lipstick smearing on each others faces. He just laughs, and pulls Harry on to the dance floor. Zayn doesn’t usually dance, and thankfully he doesn’t need to, since they just get lost in the sea of swaying bodies, clutching at each other with desperate arms and hungry lips.

Zayn brings Harry back to his apartment, and they stumble in the dark towards his bedroom. The city lights shine in through the window, and it’s enough for Harry to notice the bit of artwork on the wall.

"Jacaranda," he says, and Zayn can no longer hold himself back, so he pushes Harry on the bed, and crawls on top of him. He kisses his jaw, his collarbones, and pays very close attention to the ink on his skin. Zayn brushes his lips against them, squinting in the dark to see what they are. Harry giggles, and tugs on him. “Look in the morning."

And that’s probably the best thing Zayn’s heard all night.

\- - -

The way he falls for Harry is like plummeting headfirst into a pitch black abyss with no sign of hitting bottom. It’s rapid and endless, and it’s the scariest thing he’s ever felt. But Harry’s falling along with him, so he feels safe. He doesn’t feel alone.

"Between you and I," Harry tells him. “You could be my undoing."

"Between you and I," Zayn replies. “I’m already undone."

They hold hands while walking down the Santa Monica pier, licking melted ice cream trickling down their cones. Zayn puts sunscreen on Harry’s face every two hours, and they stay by the beach until they’re burnt, and their lips taste like salt when they kiss. They try on brightly colored sunglasses and take polaroids of each other, and Zayn puts the pictures by his bedside, while Harry puts them inside his car on the visor mirror.

Zayn mentions how he can’t see the stars in the city, and that the sky is nothing but a blue sheet. And it’s a shame because he likes laying on his back and imagining that he’s about to fall into the stars if it weren’t for gravity holding him back. The next day, he sees that Harry has hung fairy lights over his bed, and he says, “I got you the stars."

They’re laying on blankets on the roof of Zayn’s apartment, drinking cans of warm beer. It should be gross, but it’s like the ambrosia of the gods on that warm night. The heat sticks to Zayn’s skin, and he shuts his eyes, grateful for the light breeze. There’s a helicopter whirring above them, and a siren in the distance. The soundtrack of LA.

While his eyes are shut, he tells Harry about his habit of regretting decisions, and how it’s plagued him all his life. Zayn then decides to tell Harry how he hasn’t regretted him, not even once. It takes a lot to say that, but the warm beer takes off the edge, and a part of him hopes the sirens drown out his words. But they don’t. His eyes are still closed when he feels Harry’s lips on his.

"I think you were mine before we even met," he whispers against Zayn’s lips. And Zayn silently hands over his heart.

\- - -

He’s never been so sure of anything in his life. Zayn makes Los Angeles his home, and he cherishes the traffic, and how it looks like a meteor shower at night on the freeway, he loves how the palm trees look against the backdrop of a pink sunset, he loves, and loves, and loves.

Harry is a big part of what makes everything beautiful. Harry is a part of what makes this city home.

They’re lounging lazily on Zayn’s bed in the late afternoon, the sun’s rays pouring in through the open window. The room smells like bubblegum air freshener and cigarettes.

"These will be the death of you," Harry picks up a pack of cigarettes from Zayn’s bedside table.

"No," Zayn kisses Harry’s jaw. “You’ll be the death of me."

There’s something in Harry’s voice that Zayn can’t quite understand, and the silence before his answer makes him nervous too. “But I don’t want to be."

Zayn is about to tell him that he doesn’t mean it literally, but he just stays quiet, and tightens his hold around Harry’s waist. Maybe if he holds on with an iron grip, Harry won’t go. The thought of Harry leaving crosses his mind plenty of times because just like most human beings, he likes to torture himself unnecessarily. But this is the first time the thought becomes serious. He can’t lose Harry. He won’t.

But he does.

When Zayn wakes up, Harry’s side of the bed is cold, and dread starts to form in his chest before spreading through his entire body. Zayn goes to Harry’s apartment, and no one answers. The landlord tells him that the previous tenant has been slowly moving things out during the week before finalizing everything this morning. Zayn hurts all over, and he doesn’t want to be alone right now, but at the same time, he needs to be.

"Can I check it out? The apartment. I might be interested in moving in." Of course that’s a lie, but the landlord allows him.

Zayn walks in, as he’s done so many times before, except it’s devastatingly empty, and he doesn’t know how to handle it. He makes his way to the bedroom, and it’s more painful than he had imagined. There were many 4 am talks here, where he had bared his soul until sunrise. He wasn’t sure why he was here, like he expected to find Harry hiding in one of the corners, but no, there’s no Harry. There is a note though, taped to the window. Zayn takes it, and it reads.

‘Would you believe me if I said I was sorry?’

He crumples it up in his hand, rushes out, and he ends up back at his place, pounding on Perrie’s door. She’s with her girlfriend, but she takes one look at him, and pulls him into her arms. Minutes later, he’s sobbing with his head on her lap, while her girlfriend, a cute brunette with brown eyes, is painting his toenails with purple polish.

"I know it hurts, sweetie," Perrie says as she strokes his hair. “Boys like that are toxic and addictive, and that’s the worst combination. They do nothing but take, and they drain the love out of you until you’ve got nothing left."

"He loved me," Zayn chokes out.

"No," she wipes his tears away. “He thought he loved you."

\- - -

Zayn finds another note wedged between the cushions of his couch.

‘Maybe it was wrong of me to think I could keep you.’

He goes up to his roof. The last time he was here, he was with Harry, and he tells himself that he’ll try not to think about it, but it’s impossible. He looks up at the starless sky, and he feels just as empty as the blank dark blue canvas above him. Los Angeles sucked the good, and all the love out of him, the same way it sucked the stars from the heavens.

\- - -

It doesn’t take long for him to decide to move out. Perrie tries to convince him to stay, but nothing she says can make him change his mind. Zayn thinks Portland sounds nice. And most important of all, it’s far. Far away from the magic and spells of LA.

He sells his all his furniture, and takes only two suitcases of belongings. It’s a bittersweet farewell, more on the bitter side. Perrie cries, and he feels bad, but he knows that she understands heartache and how it can drive a person to do the extreme. He needs new people, a new life, especially now that he has a better grip on his feelings. On reality.

Zayn checks his mail for the last time, and there’s one envelope there, but it has no return address. He thinks about just leaving it, but curiosity gets the best of him, and he rips it open. He pulls out the note, and reads.

‘Between you and I, I still keep your pictures underneath my bed.’

For a split second, he almost stays. He almost changes his mind again, and goes back up to his apartment. He almost does.

But he makes his way to his car, and he doesn’t look back.


End file.
